


The Mail Sure Adds Up

by Mithrakana



Category: Arkham Horror (Card Game)
Genre: Card Game: Arkham Horror - The Dream-Eaters, Epilogue, Niche - Freeform, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:35:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26279527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrakana/pseuds/Mithrakana
Summary: How many Eldritch sigils can one hitman bury in his lawn?
Kudos: 5





	1. The House with the Nicest Fence

**Author's Note:**

> To Josh: A partner I'd be glad to have by my side during any apocalypse, be it Eldritch or mundane. In gratitude for his tireless dedication to assembling damn near every Arkham Horror deck ever printed.
> 
> (Caveat: While in canon Ashcan Pete's loyal hounddog is indeed named Duke, we love a hound named Sally and have Mary Sue Dogged her.)

The rhythmic rasp of steel in pebbly loam reverberated through the dusklit street. The few who passed looked twice, surprised to see a fellow in his Sunday best - white shirtsleeves, pressed crisp and fastidiously rolled, unwrinkled tweeds, the metal bits of his suspenders shone as brightly as his well-buffed oxblood Oxfords - sweating dusty-faced and focused in the corner of his lawn.

The man smoked a cigarillo as he dug. Each drag was deep and long, a kiss between two lovers who spent countless evenings certain they would never kiss again.

“Morgue full, Tony?” Came a friendly heckle from a grinning woman who had slowed to watch. She was eagerly awaiting a response. Her husband was clearly irritated. “Leave the man to his business,” he murmured unauthoritatively. He was carrying a cakebox.

Tony’s prosperous trade was not a secret: On the contrary, it thrilled his neighbors. Though he was a scheduled topic at the weekly cribbage night, no mouth spoke ill of him. Children would sneak penny candy to his doorstep, wrapped in chicken-scratch letters of commission dooming bullies and math teachers alike. Neighbors young and old spoke over one another when company came in from out of town, eager for first brag at local providence. “That fancy house you passed on Parish Street, the one with the bright gold knocker on the glossy black door? That’s Tony “Hunter” Morgan’s house! He eats at Sal’s Diner!”

Folks were proud. Folks felt safe. Folks noticed he’d been gone months longer than usual, and they were glad to have him home. Many families had prayed lightheartedly for his safety at their meals while Tony screamed his throat bloody beneath their reality, emptying his guns into the stuff of hell.

Local fame was Tony’s least beloved aspect of his work, but he navigated it as best he could. Foot perched upon his planted shovel, he stood upright and mopped his brow with the towel hanging on his shoulder. The dazzling smile that lit his face was tense and fake. To the locals, he read as charming.

“You got it right, Mz. Sanders. Have a nice evening, now.”

The woman tutted and waved a hand at him as though he were an impish child. She chuckled onward down the sidewalk, giddy with his brief attention. Her husband rolled his eyes and sighed, apparently chronically unimpressed.

As they departed Tony lingered in a private out-of-body moment, staring absent at his newly blistered hands. To employ his old fake smile, to speak in tones so mild and friendly, to appear unthreatened by another being’s approach. To not be gritting, whispering, growling, sobbing, screaming. To watch a man and a woman walk together in a once-familiar sunset, carrying a fucking cake down the street.

Tony became aware of a whine in his own throat. He reanimated with quick violence, snatching the heavy marble tablet from the grass beside his feet and chucking it into the hole he’d just dug at the northeast corner of his property. Carved alien symbols disappeared from view as Tony feverishly filled the hole, burying his fourth and final warding symbol purchased from a _bruja_ of repute in some ghetto of East Boston. (Suffice to say, his peace of mind had not come cheap.)

Task complete, he tamped the soil and tossed his shovel aside. He lit another cigarello and glared at the fresh-churned earth, waiting to feel satisfied and safe. His dirty fingers bothered at the new talisman nestled in his chest hair, soiling his shirt.

Tony was not aware of just how long he stood there, staring downward in the corner of his front yard. He couldn’t say how many passers-by made bids for chat that went unanswered. The lamplighter came and went, ushering the sidewalk safely into night.

The squeak of his front gate broke Tony’s trance. A black boy dressed in fine livery smiled up at Tony from the walkway, presenting a violin case with great care. “Delivery sir, the house with the nicest fence. Hathaway?”

Neighbors watching through their curtains thrummed with glee at the transaction. An eyebrow-waggling wad of bills from Tony’s trousers, payment followed by a generous gratuity poked into the boy’s vest pocket, a grateful squeeze of his slender shoulder. 

The much-loved bounty hunter was acquiring a new gun where everyone could see him. 

Onlookers clucked with surprise when Tony reached for the paid case and was denied. The boy politely bowed, explaining himself in words too far to hear. Hands up in a gesture of apology, Tony led the boy up fresh-swept steps into his home and shut the door behind them.

Electrified with feeling “in on it”, one by one his grinning neighbors returned to their dinners.


	2. Keep On Being Crackers

“How’re they doing? Thanks for that, the mail sure adds up. Boy’s here to see you.”

“No change. No problem. You ever been to Cairo? This poor woman...” Patrice was seated on the edge of Luke’s bed with one hand on his knee in silent comfort. They’d converted Tony’s study into an infirmary. Of late, both Luke and Pete were pale and icy cold. Dr. Maheswaran thought the fireside placement prudent. “Sally loves my fireplace,” Tony had emotionally added.

Patrice’s off hand held a weather-worn letter with which she stayed engaged, her focus never easily redirected. On the nightstand loomed an ever-shrinking mound of correspondence not yet opened. Around her on the floor, she’d sorted piles by importance. Tony’s mail was far more interesting than her own, which she was studiously avoiding. She’d been fired from the symphony and blacklisted, she knew, by scheming sycophants who’d conspired to see the ass-end of her for years. What’s the fun in reading that pompous victory letter? Why not read a hitman’s mail instead?

The errand boy stood rigid in the doorway of the study, hugging the violin under his arm. He was clearly uncomfortable bearing witness to the invalids, his gaze fixed on the sleeping hounddog with a glass bottle of what looked like water hanging over her head. His eyes followed the IV tubes, slowly widening. Patrice, blind to him, kept reading. Tony tended to the fire.

“Cairo? Nah, that’s a new one for me. What woman? Pat. Pat, he has your violin.”

Emboldened, the boy chimed, “Miss Hathaway, ma’am.”

Patrice looked up, her breath caught. She jumped to her feet and stormed towards the boy with an artist’s intensity. He looked used to it. He was glad to surrender his parcel and leave.

Their conversation forgotten, Patrice made her way to Tony’s desk and set to fawning over her rejuvenated violin. Adoring fingers wandered the interior, freshly lined with gaudy red velvet. The violin and all its trappings were once again pristine - no gore, no muck, no scratches.

“Look better? That was expensive.” A hopeful observation, not a complaint. While staying here she’d come to learn that Tony was refreshingly unprecious about money.

“He’s the best luthier in the country,” Patrice responded, too distracted for gratitude or to notice Tony’s useless fussing over Pete. She took up her freshly gleaming instrument with expert grace and sureness, ran it through a pace of Paganini. Happy tears sprang to her eyes, and she smiled with her whole being.

Music was hers again. For months she could only play racket haunted and wan, and their harrowing journey had left the instrument defiled in every way. With a wash of relief and joy, Patrice played on, the familiar melody rendering her memories of cursed noise obsolete. She cast her grief aside, at once reborn and complete. Patrice held on to nothing.

She then noticed Tony’s furrowed brow, his skeptical expression trained on her instrument from where he knelt at Pete’s side. The vein on his temple was throbbing like it does. As a kindness, though it wrenched her, Patrice stilled, silencing her strings. She watched his tension lessen in response.

“Sounds the same, Pat. It’s safe?”

Patrice bit back her habitual sarcasm; she did not quip on his tone-deaf relationship with music or call him a neanderthal. Tony had earned better than that from her. (The unlikely pair had grown surprisingly gentle with each other.)

“It’s safe. I feel it. I promise.”

One trusting nod, and he spoke no more on it. She watched Tony rise to his feet, pressing a tender kiss to Pete’s forehead. With a sniff and a sigh, he left the room, presumably to bathe and change his clothes as he had done three times so far today.

His water bill must be egregious. Patrice wasn’t certain which of Tony’s eccentricities were new.

She called after her host as he moved deeper into his beautiful home, towards the washroom indeed.

“Hey Tone, did you try those pills?”

“Nahhh.” Said with a playfulness designed to disregard and redirect. She knew it well.

“Dr. Maheswaran thinks you - ” The bathroom door didn’t slam, per se, but its closing on her sentence said enough.

 _Suits me,_ she thought. _Keep on being crackers._

Patrice reclaimed her seat at Luke’s side. At long last, uninterrupted, she played.


	3. Is It the Plaid?

Just beyond their campfire, a kaleidoscopic sky writhed above the terra not-so ferma of their latest hell, a wasteland of skeletal trees and ankle-deep sludge. They’d collapsed in a muddy pile beneath one such awful tree, on a firmer patch one dare not name as ‘dry’ or ‘safe’ or ‘comfortable’.

Motivated by a will to stay unnoticed, until now the trio had denied themselves the comfort of a fire. This night Luke insisted, snapping branches from the lifeless tree they wallowed beneath. Theirs was a languid flame, sulfureous and wheezing. Even so, the crackle of this otherworldly tinder soothed one’s sanity - Familiar. Warm. A heartening reminder that this world could burn. (Nevermind the fumes, which Luke ruefully imagined must be toxic.)

Luke sat doleful-quiet in the mud for quite some time, staring at his partner’s wounded leg across the campfire.

Softly. “Pete, please. I can get us out of here.”

Pete’s on-task eyes stayed gentle as he tended Sally’s wounds, fingering a nearly-empty dented tin of Rawleigh’s antiseptic salve. The dog, sprawled on her side, stared absently ahead. Her heavy sigh implied that the impending conflict was not new, or that she longed for Tony's cold cuts, or that she found the fire quite a welcome sight. Relaxed as she seemed, her snout and ears patrolled the area unceasing.

Luke found Pete’s signature molasses-calm pathetic when his voice was tight with pain. “I’ve had worse. We’ll splint it. Can’t leave without ‘em, Luke. Tony’d never leave me here. They need our help.”

“...We’ll splint it.” Luke half-laughed, disbelieving and a bit insane. He was pacing at the fireside now, knuckles white with clenching the mahogany box in his hand. He somehow yelled and whispered all at once. He hadn’t railed at his self-sacrificing comrade with such passion in a fortnight, since the last time Pete refused to deem his own wellbeing important. (If Luke paced a step too far, the hungry ground sucked at his shoes. He worked hard not to look upon the maddening, churning sky.)

“You- ...daft ...milquetoast ...hillbilly! _**Splint it?**_ Your leg looks like a, a popsicle stick! _They_ need help? _We_ need help! What happened to trusting my experience? I’m in charge of this operation, and I am telling you - We’re no help to anyone if we’re dead! I’m _telling_ you, we need to wake up!” (Luke nearly tacked on, _and I’m sure they’re fine!_ Or, _They’re up there playing cribbage and taking turns wiping our asses!_ Or, _Wasn’t killing that fucking THING and saving the WORLD enough for you?_ Or, _Think of Sally! Think of me! Think of yourself for once!_ He didn’t bother. No such line had worked before.)

Tired would be an insult to describing how they looked and smelled and felt. Luke was right - They were debilitated. They were used up, and so were their supplies. (There was a time when Luke would balk at how a man whose flesh was torn to ribbons used his medical supplies in service of his dog. That time passed when Sally saved Luke’s life three worlds ago. Now, the precious salve on Sally’s haunch belonged to Luke.)

Pete started off good-naturedly reminding Luke that he was from Quebec, and assuredly not a hillbilly. “Is it the plaid?” He asked for the one hundredth time. 

Sally perked her ears and sat upright with the swiftness of a hunter, ignoring their squabbles. Both men froze and listened, staring at the dog for cues. More oft than not, this was how their brief reprieves were ended - A sound, a shift of light, a movement. The cascade of nightmares that inevitably follows stimuli that once were thought benign.

This time, it was music. Bright, clear, lovely music. 

_Patrice._

Luke’s pulse skipped before he moved like lightning. He grasped Pete by the arm and held him tight, their eyes locked.  
  
“Listen to me, damn you. They’re safe. We’re leaving _now._ Sit still and scruff that dog.”  
  
Before Pete could respond, Luke reached deep within his robes. He was brandishing a wicked twice-curved dagger Randolph used to carry. He was yelling sing-song in a language Pete had heard by now, but didn’t understand. Wild-eyed Sally struggled to withdraw from this unsavory behavior, but Pete (obediently, against his better judgment) held her fast.

Luke’s strange box was open on the ground between them. Luke clenched his eyes shut tight and yelled a final word. Pete screamed in terror as Luke plunged the dagger into his own throat, blood spilling into the box.  
  
Pete was still screaming when he woke.


	4. To Be Free of Nothing

Tony erupted naked from the shower and snatched the loaded pistol from atop his neatly folded clothes, juggernauting towards the cacophony of screams in his study. He was in the room two beats after Patrice’s violin screeched to a halt. Crackers as he was - even with shampoo suds in his hair and a too-big talisman around his neck - Tony’s murderous bearing robbed the room of any comedy.

He took the scene in on fast-forward, gun trained on each assessment. Patrice was on the letter-littered floor recoiling from Luke’s bed, her violin beside her, screaming. Luke’s eyes were open, seemingly lucid. He was breathing open-mouthed and shaking, clenching and releasing his fists, staring at the ceiling. Pete sat upright, screaming WAIT and thrashing to be free of nothing. In his throes he tore the IV needle from his arm, sent saline bottles crash-shattering to the floor.

Simultaneously came the hell Tony had braced for, a low black shape streaking from the beds straight for him. He snarled defiance, he aimed, he nearly fired before she named herself with a familiar bay of misery. 

The hounddog scrambled madly past him, surely headed for her hiding spot beneath the stairs. The wet wood floors robbed Sally of all grace in her retreat. 

That morning, after a tearful many-hours reunion, Tony coaxed her from her hiding spot with cold cuts and asked Sally if she’d ever been to Cairo.


End file.
